Preparing your materials

Policy on prior publication

When authors submit manuscripts to this journal, these manuscripts should not be under consideration, accepted for publication or in press within a different journal, book or similar entity, unless explicit permission or agreement has been sought from all entities involved. However, deposition of a preprint on the author’s personal website, in an institutional repository, or in a preprint archive shall not be viewed as prior or duplicate publication. Authors should follow the Cambridge University Press Preprint Policy regarding preprint archives and maintaining the version of record.

Scope

Evolutionary Human Sciences is a fully Open Access journal that supports a unified approach to evolutionary human sciences. We are concerned with understanding how evolution has shaped humankind, from biology through to culture. The journal aims to attract papers in the fields of evolutionary anthropology, cultural evolution, human biology, evolutionary medicine, anthropological genetics, phylogenetics, paleoanthropology and evolutionary approaches to psychology, cognition, language, economics, archaeology, primatology, politics and anything else that can be considered to be part of the evolutionary human sciences. Evolutionary Human Sciences has a continuous publication model (see description here), and publishes interdisciplinary original research, including registered reports, and reviews.

Submission of Manuscripts and Peer Review

All new submissions should be submitted online at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.c...

Evolutionary Human Sciences uses a single-anonymous peer review process. Submitted manuscripts are reviewed by a member of the Editorial Board and at least two reviewers. Final decisions are approved by the Editor-in-Chief.

We accept Latex submissions

Both LaTeX and Word submissions should be accompanied by PDF files, both during the review process and in final export. When submitting your paper, please upload your LaTex sources files separately to the main file. We also have an Overleaf template available now to use - please see below.

See more details on the peer review process here.

Overleaf

Overleaf is a free online tool for writing and submitting scholarly manuscripts. An Overleaf template is available for this journal, which allows authors to easily comply with the journal’s guidelines.

Benefits of using Overleaf include:

An intuitive interface, in which authors can write in LaTeX or rich text and see a preview of their article typeset in the journal’s style

Features enabling collaboration with co-authors (the ability to share, highlight and comment on versions of articles)

Sophisticated version control

Clean PDF conversion and submission into the journal’s online manuscripts system (supporting materials can also be added during this process)

Overleaf is based on LaTeX but includes a rich text mode. An author writing in Overleaf would need to have some knowledge of LaTeX, but could collaborate through the tool with an author who is not a LaTeX expert. Overleaf’s tutorial pages include a two minute video and an introduction to LaTeX course, and Overleaf also provides support for authors using the tool.

Note: authors should flatten their image files before uploading them to Overleaf and the journal’s submission system. This can be done by using Photoshop or GIMP, an open source Photoshop equivalent, both of which have a ‘Flatten Image’ option in the Layer menu. If you are using a locally installed LaTeX editor, it’s also possible to use in-line commands to do a round-trip conversion – see this Overleaf help page for more information.

The Overleaf template for EHS can be found here.

Themed Article Collections

We are always on the lookout for ideas of themed article collections – please consider submitting your suggestions via email to Harry Busby.

ORCID IDs

Evolutionary Human Sciences requires that all corresponding authors identify themselves using ORCID when submitting a manuscript to the journal. Joining ORCID is fast, free and you do not need to have a current affiliation. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration in key research workflows such as publication and grant applications, provides the following benefits:

Discoverability: ORCID increases the discoverability of your publications, by enabling smarter publisher systems and by helping readers to reliably find work that you’ve authored.
Convenience: As more organisations use ORCID, providing your ID or using it to register for services will automatically link activities to your ORCID profile, and will save you re-keying information multiple times.
Keeping track: Your ORCID profile is a neat place to record and display (if you choose) validated information about your research activities.

If you don’t already have an ID, you’ll need to create one if you decide to submit a manuscript to Evolutionary Human Sciences. You can register for one directly from your user account on ScholarOne or via https://orcid.org/register. If you already have an ID, please use this when submitting by linking it to your ScholarOne user account. Simply log in to your account using your normal username and password. Edit your account by clicking on your name at the top right of the screen and from the dropdown menu, select 'E-Mail / Name'. Follow the instructions at the top of the screen to update your account.

For more information read this.

Article Types

Guidelines for each article type, including word limits, are included below. All word counts given here are discounting references.

Article Type	Limits	Description
Original Research Article	The main text of an original research article, excluding the abstract, tables, figures and references, should be no longer than necessary (up to 8000 words for a long-form article). Articles should contain no more than 8 display items (figures or tables).	A research article is an original piece of research with strong, well-supported conclusions that mark a significant advance in understanding and global implications. The text should be divided into the following sections: introduction, methods, results and discussion.
Reviews (Reviews are commissioned but brief proposals will be welcomed.)	The length of the review article will depend on the scope of the subject area and its topicality, but generally articles should not exceed 8000 words for the main text, and 150 references.	Reviews provide a comprehensive assessment of a particular topic or research area. They may provide interdisciplinary syntheses and can provide conclusions and insights relevant to future research, methodology or societal implications. Review submissions do not need to be formally divided into sub categories but should contain the same information as required for an original research article (introduction, results and discussion) within the main body of the text.
Methods Paper	The length of Methods articles will depend on the scope of the subject area, but generally articles should not exceed 8000 words for the main text and 150 references.	Methods papers provide details of methods and/or methodological issues relevant to a particular research area, or methods that are in general use in our field. Explanatory papers are welcome.
Commentaries	Commentaries are flexible in format but should generally be limited to 1000 words, with maximum one table or figure.	Commentaries responding any of the article types above published by the journal are always welcome and readers are encouraged to submit these as soon as possible. Commentaries will be subject to review by the editor responsible for the publication of the original article.
Perspectives	Perspectives articles should not exceed 8000 words for the main text and 150 references.	Perspectives articles enable the discussion of ideas from a personal viewpoint, more so than might be appropriate for a review or research paper. The aim is to air new ideas and opinions, challenge old ones and stimulate debate.
Registered Reports	Initial submission (Stage 1) should be no longer than 6,000 words to enable for the results section to be added in Stage 2. Submission at Stage 2 should be no longer than 8,000 words.	Please see link here for more details on the registered reports submission process.

Manuscript Preparation

Title page

The title page should include:

The title of the article, which should be short (preferably up to 12 words) but informative and accurately reflect the content.
Authors’ names and contact details: please list a brief affiliation for each author including country (assigned with superscript numbers) below the author names, and in addition, indicate the corresponding author with an asterisk and in this case provide an email address
Word count, including all text but excluding tables, figures and references.

Abstract

Abstracts (200 words max) should summarize the background, findings, and implications of the work. Graphical abstract images need to be supplied as 900px high or wide on its longest edge, and as PNG file type. For graphical abstract images, please can you specify clearly that they are a graphical abstract in the file heading.

Social Media summary (final draft only)

Please include a summary of your article in 120 characters or less for use in social media promotion.

Text

For all types of articles, please make sure the manuscript is presented with figures incorporated in roughly the correct place if possible, with legends. Also please submit a document with numbered lines. All these requests are made to facilitate the reviewing process.

Please include continuous line numbers, as it helps the review and revise process.

Keywords

During submission, you will be asked to include a minimum of three keywords.

Figures and tables

Please incorporate figures and tables throughout the text in the main WORD.docx file. For guidance on producing figures and tables, please visit the Cambridge Journals Artwork Guide. Please also find linked Cambridge's Artwork Guidelines and Vector Graphics Instructions.

References

References and citations should be formatted correctly in journal style when the article is submitted to the journal but formatting is not grounds for rejection at the submitting phase.

References in text should be cited by the author(s) surname(s) and the year of publication (e.g. Smith, 2012). References with two authors should be cited with both surnames (e.g. Smith and Wright, 2013). References with three or more authors should be cited with the first author followed by et al. (in italics; e.g. Smith et al.).

‘Unpublished observations’ and ‘personal communications’ may not be used as references, although references to written, not oral, communications may be inserted (in parentheses) in the text. Include among the references articles accepted but not yet published, or published online only (please supply Digital Object Identifier [DOI] reference, if known); designate the journal and add ‘(in press)’. For in press citations, an acceptance letter from the publisher will be required. Information from manuscripts submitted but not yet accepted should be cited in the text as ‘unpublished observations’.

The references must be verified by the author(s) against the original documents.

The references section should be in alphabetical order by the first author's surname.

Please follow the APA citation style. Research articles should not exceed 75 references in the main text, and reviews should not exceed 150 references.

Footnotes

This journal does not accept footnotes.

Required Statements

The five sections below must be included. Please make sure you have provided these. These statements should be included at the end of the manuscript, before the References section.

1) Acknowledgements

You may acknowledge individuals or organisations that provided advice, support (non-financial). Formal financial support and funding should be listed in the Financial Support section (see below).

2) Author Contributions

A short statement should be provided indicating how each author contributed to the work. For example: AB and CD conceived and designed the study. CD and EF conducted data gathering. GH performed statistical analyses. AB, EF and GH wrote the article.

3) Financial Support

Please provide details of the sources of financial support for all authors, including grant numbers. For example, "This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant number XXXXXXX)". Multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma and space, and where research was funded by more than one agency the different agencies should be separated by a semi-colon, with 'and' before the final funder. Grants held by different authors should be identified as belonging to individual authors by the authors' initials. For example, "This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (A.B., grant numbers XXXX, YYYY), (C.D., grant number ZZZZ); the Natural Environment Research Council (E.F., grant number FFFF); and the Australian Research Council (A.B., grant number GGGG), (E.F., grant number HHHH)".

Where no specific funding has been provided for research, please provide the following statement: "This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors."

4) Conflicts of Interest declarations in manuscripts

• Authors should include a Conflicts of Interest declaration in their manuscript. If authors do not include this, their submission will not proceed to peer review. • Conflicts of Interest are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on an author’s presentation of their work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations. • Conflicts of Interest do not necessarily mean that an author’s work has been compromised. Authors should declare any real or perceived Conflicts of Interest in order to be transparent about the context of their work. • If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting the manuscript must include Conflicts of Interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors. • Example wording for a Conflicts of Interest declaration is as follows: “Conflicts of Interest: Author A is employed at company B. Author C owns shares in company D, is on the Board of company E and is a member of organisation F. Author G has received grants from company H.” If no Conflicts of Interest exist, the declaration should state “Conflicts of Interest: Author A and Author B declare none”.

5) Research Transparency and Reproducibility

Authors must make all data, materials, protocols and software available to readers without undue barriers to access.

A data availability statement should be included and provide URLs for any available datasets or code.

Please see our Research Transparency page for further details.

Supplementary Material

Additional material (e.g. data sets, large tables) relevant to the article can be submitted with your manuscript for publication online, where they are made available via a link from the article. Supplementary material can take the form of a Word document, Excel file or image. The article should stand alone without these data. Supplementary Material must be cited in a relevant place in the text of the article.

Please note that (unlike figures included in the printed article) captions or legends should be included for all figures and tables in Supplementary Material. You should number figures or tables with the prefix ‘S’, e.g. Supplementary Figure S1, Supplementary Table S1. Colour images for online publication as Supplementary Material must be saved in RGB format (not CMYK).

Supplementary Material is not checked, copyedited or typeset after acceptance and it is loaded onto the journal’s website exactly as supplied. You should check your Supplementary Material carefully to ensure that it adheres to journal styles. Corrections cannot be made to the Supplementary Material after acceptance of the manuscript. Please bear this in mind when deciding what content to include as Supplementary Material.

Accepted Manuscripts

Accepted manuscripts are published online as is (before copy-editing or typesetting) within approximately a week of final acceptance, provided we have received all final files and a completed license to publish form. At this point, the article will have a DOI and be considered published and citable. You will subsequently receive a proof of your typeset, edited article, which will eventually replace the accepted manuscript online and be considered the final version of record. Accepted manuscripts can be viewed here.

Please see the 'publication process after acceptance' page for more details.

Publishing Ethics

Evolutionary Human Sciences considers all manuscripts on the strict condition that:

The manuscript is your own original work, and does not duplicate any other previously published work;
The manuscript has been submitted only to the journal - it is not under consideration, accepted for publication or in press elsewhere. Manuscripts may be deposited on pre-print servers;
The manuscript contains nothing that is abusive, defamatory, fraudulent, illegal, libellous, or obscene.

The journal adheres to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines on research and publications ethics.

Text taken directly or closely paraphrased from earlier published work that has not been acknowledged or referenced will be considered plagiarism. Submitted manuscripts in which such text is identified will be withdrawn from the editorial process.

Where research involves human and/or animal experimentation, the following statements should be included (as applicable): "The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008." and "The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional guides on the care and use of laboratory animals." Any other specific ethical clearance with details of the granting institution should be given in the Methods section.

We take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism, or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. Text taken directly or closely paraphrased from earlier published work that has not been acknowledged or referenced will be considered plagiarism. Submitted manuscripts in which such text is identified will be withdrawn from the editorial process. If a concern is raised about possible plagiarism in an article submitted to or published in the journal, this will be investigated fully and dealt with in accordance with the COPE guidelines. If needed the manuscript can be processed by iThenticate.

Please visit the ethics guidelines page for information on our ethical guidelines.

Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools

We acknowledge the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the research and writing processes. To ensure transparency, we expect any such use to be declared and described fully to readers, and to comply with our plagiarism policy and best practices regarding citation and acknowledgements. We do not consider artificial intelligence (AI) tools to meet the accountability requirements of authorship, and therefore generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and similar should not be listed as an author on any submitted content.

In particular, any use of an AI tool:

to generate images within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, and declared clearly in the image caption(s)
to generate text within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, include appropriate and valid references and citations, and be declared in the manuscript’s Acknowledgements.
to analyse or extract insights from data or other materials, for example through the use of text and data mining, should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, including details and appropriate citation of any dataset(s) or other material analysed in all relevant and appropriate areas of the manuscript
must not present ideas, words, data, or other material produced by third parties without appropriate acknowledgement or permission

Descriptions of AI processes used should include at minimum the version of the tool/algorithm used, where it can be accessed, any proprietary information relevant to the use of the tool/algorithm, any modifications of the tool made by the researchers (such as the addition of data to a tool’s public corpus), and the date(s) it was used for the purpose(s) described. Any relevant competing interests or potential bias arising as a consequence of the tool/algorithm’s use should be transparently declared and may be discussed in the article.

Journal Style

Authors should note the following:

S.I. units should be used throughout in text, figures and tables.
Authors should spell out in full any abbreviations used in their manuscripts.
Foreign quotations and phrases should be followed by a translation.

Copyright & Open Access

Please visit tab here for more information.

The policy of Evolutionary Human Sciences is that authors (or in some cases their employers) retain copyright and grant Cambridge University Press a non-exclusive licence to publish their work.

Before beginning work on the production of any accepted manuscript, Cambridge requires a signed ‘licence to publish’ agreement. The process for creating, signing and submitting these agreements is now managed entirely online, which means that there is no need to print, scan, email, or mail anything. Once a manuscript has been accepted for publication in the journal, the corresponding author will receive an email inviting them to complete an Information Request Form (IRF) via our digital contract management platform, Ironclad.

The information submitted via this form (including information on copyright holder, open access status, etc.) will determine the terms and conditions under which the article will be published, and will be used to generate the licence to publish agreement. The form sets out the Creative Commons licence under which the article is made available to end users: a fundamental principle of open access is that content should not simply be accessible but should also be freely re-usable. Articles will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC-BY) by default. This means that the article is freely available to read, copy and redistribute, and can also be adapted (users can “remix, transform, and build upon” the work) for any commercial or non-commercial purpose, as long as proper attribution is given. Authors can, in the publishing agreement form, choose a different kind of Creative Commons license (including those prohibiting non-commercial and derivative use) if they prefer.The corresponding author will be guided through the process to signature and submission.

For more information on author publishing agreements, see here.

Author Language Services

Cambridge recommends that authors have their manuscripts checked by an English language native speaker before submission; this will ensure that submissions are judged at peer review exclusively on academic merit. We list a number of third-party services specialising in language editing and/or translation, and suggest that authors contact as appropriate. Use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense.

Further Details

For further information on this journal, please see our Production FAQs.

Digital Preservation Policy

Cambridge University Press publications are deposited in the following digital archives to guarantee long-term digital preservation:

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